Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume II
CHAPTER III -- TOOLS OF HAPPINESS
(Q. 11-17)1. Necessity of familiarity with tools of successful living. 2. Necessity of familiarity with ingredients of these tools. 3. Two ways of considering human acts: (a) Empirically (scientifically): (1) Physiologically. (2) Psychologically. (3) Mathematically. (b) Philosophically: (1) In themselves. (2) In their morality. 4. Story behind the controls of human action: (a) General Principle -- reason is the form of human activity. (b) Story in detail: (1) With reference to the goal or end -- apprehension, volition, conation, enjoyment. (2) With reference to the means: a. On the part of the intellect -- counsel, judgment, command. b. On the part of the will -- consent, election, execution. c. Two characteristic: all are uniquely human; all are controlled. 5. Practical views: (a) Birth and growth to maturity of human act. (b) Decision and execution in every-day life. (c) The government of the kingdom of man. Conclusion: 1. Forging the tools of life, as well as wielding them, demands delicate balance: (a) Blindness of sheer will. (b) Practical sterility of sheer intellect. (c) Despair of endless steps. 2. That balance makes the difference between bungling and skillful living. 3. Skill in living is essentially in the act of command: (a) What interferes with command interferes with our mastery of life. (b) By command man shares the labours of Providence. (c) Law and the reign of law are impossible without command which is the heart of control.
CHAPTER III
TOOLS OF HAPPINESS
(Q. 11-17)In the search for speculative truth, the farther one gets from the concrete, singular, matter-of-fact affairs, the closer one approaches to the truth sought. On the contrary, if the search be for practical truth, perfection lies in coming to grips with concrete details. A theoretical chemist can sit at his desk and, with no more help than that given by a sharp pencil, can pursue his labours happily and effectively; but the practical chemist must be mechanic enough to know how to assemble the apparatus for his experiments or even to create that apparatus, or he will get no results at all.
Our work in this volume is of a decidedly practical nature; so practical, in fact, that it is the business of every human being. Our task is the examination of the whole problem of human happiness. Every step we take is a step down into the every-day world of human affairs; in every chapter we come closer to the roar and confusion of human activity.
So far we have been looking at men and their deeds in a general way. We found what happiness consists in and how it is grasped by men; in other words, the meaning of human life and human activity. The problem of the last chapter was the humanity of human actions, the examination into their mysterious power to make a success of life, their ability to win happiness. And that secret was summed up in the words "control" or "deliberate will". We saw that it was by the actions under man's control that he wins happiness; that only such actions were admitted by men and women as human, and everything that could remotely affect that control was a subject worthy of investigation.
Necessity of familiarity with tools of successful living
In this chapter we are coming down a step further, penetrating into the control room of every human life, trying to discover what does the controlling and just what actions are controlled and how. Since it is by his activity that man makes a success or blunder of his life, these human actions are the tools by which his happiness must be worked out. To use tools effectively, one must be familiar with them. It is not mere superstition that leads the baseball player or cricketer to insist on his own bat; the fact that I am using someone else's pen may not be the whole explanation of the execrable character of my penmanship, but it contributes a part; a stenographer trying out for a job on an unfamiliar machine is not necessarily offering an excuse when she says she could do better on her own typewriter.
For their effective use, tools must not merely be fitted for the particular job in hand. They must be practiced with, weighed, measured, hefted. When it was said that one of the first requirements a good surgeon is that he be a good mechanic, a great truth was expressed; for the surgeon, like anyone who must use tools, is great when he has made his fools a part of himself, an extension of his own hands, of his own brain.
Necessity of familiarity with ingredients of these tools
We must be familiar with the tools we are going to use on the job of living. But a mechanic's knowledge is not enough; we cannot buy those tools, we must create, must forge them, we must know what goes into their make-up. A lawyer preparing his brief must view the case from every possible angle, and then very carefully include, and even more carefully exclude, material from that brief. A doctor who writes a prescription which stops dandruff but paralyses the patient has written a very bad prescription. In the same way, the man who looks at only one angle of the job of living, who considers only one phase of his tools, or who concentrates on one ingredient in their manufacture, will do a very bad job of living.
Two ways of considering human acts
Actually we can exhaust the possible views of man's activity by looking at human actions from two angles: from the angle of science, looking for the answer to the question "how?"; and from the angle of philosophy, looking for the answer to the question "why?".
Empirically (scientifically): Physiologically
Science can, and as a matter of fact does, examine human actions. And this is quite proper. Man is a living organism, he is an animal, all of his actions create some little ripple on the pool of physical nature. Physiology can quite properly examine and correlate the results of its examination of the blood, the nerves, the muscles, the brain of man in his different activities. Experimental psychology can properly compare the common elements in human and animal activity; it can search out the physical basis of neuroses, the springs of hate and fear, anger, despair and all the rest. Scientists can measure and weigh, make up averages, statistics, ratios, quotas, and be entirely within their scope. All this is an invaluable contribution to human knowledge.
Psychologically
Tragedy enters the picture when it is supposed that all this, or any part of it, is the whole story of human actions; or, indeed, that it is the important part of the story. As far as human actions are concerned, science is always on the outside, looking in. It is just as unfair to expect the whole story from science, as it is to expect an account of a football game from the wistful boy standing outside the stadium listening to the cheers. The account becomes more accurate the closer we get to the inside; for the whole story, we must get inside the brain of the man who is running the team.
Mathematically
This mistake is not the mistake of scientists, but of modern philosophers. Each one of these sciences has been erected into a philosophy over the protest of the scientist. For example, in recent years an associate professor of psychology at a mid-western university, has expressly insisted on the fact that science is seeking the ultimate causes, not seeking the answer to the question "why?", but only the proximate, immediate causes in answer to the question "how?". In other words, science, examining human actions, examines everything but their humanity. This last is the philosopher's task; and philosopher's task it will continue to be as long as it remains impossible to put the spiritual under a microscope or to dissect it with a scalpel.
Philosophically
The investigation of the empirical or scientific angle is something we can safely leave to someone else whom we consult from time to time as the occasion demands -- or perhaps not at all. For the key to successful living lies precisely in the humanity of these actions of ours, in their subjection to our control. That angle we cannot leave to anyone but ourselves; that element must permeate every action in every instant of its existence, and is our business every moment of our lives. Whether we like it or not, we must be philosophers.
In themselves
Do not let that frighten you. It does not necessarily mean long hair, fits of abstraction, or that vague far-away look which is such a deterrent to sprightly conversation. Many a farmer has raised successful crops, though he never saw an agricultural college; but he did go to school -- to the very difficult school of experience. And that same school has, early in life, made a philosopher of every human being. It will be evident from the example used farther on, that what is to be said in this chapter is not an abstruse, totally unfamiliar bit of doctrine. But rather, like all scholastic philosophy, is organized common sense.
In their morality
From this all-important philosophical angle, which will give us the whole story of human action, we can look at the controlling and controlled actions of our everyday lives, cutting them off from every other consideration, and considering them solely in themselves, one by one, as they pour forth from the great centre of human movement. That is the work of this chapter. In the next chapter our work will be to consider these actions in reference to good and evil, to their morality or immorality, to try to plumb the depths of a question which has turned the modern world upside down.
Story behind the controls of human action
As we look into the control-room of human activity, we can see two great dynamos -- the intellect and the will of man. The work of the first is to know; that of the second is to desire, to move, to enjoy. The will of itself is blind; like every other appetite in every other creature, it trails along, following and limited by knowledge. The intellect, of itself, is powerless to move itself or anything else. Yet from the combination of these two, we have that distinctive human product -- movement with knowledge, controlled or deliberate movement, that is the means by which happiness is obtained. Not movement alone, not knowledge alone, but controlled movement makes a success of life.
Right here, in the very beginning of our inspection of the control-room, we seem to have met an insuperable obstacle. It is impossible to expect a movement from the will until some object of desire is letdown; yet there can be no movement to knowledge, or to anything else, without having recourse to the source of all movement in man, his will.
General Principle -- reason is the form of human activity
The answer is easy enough. But, to grasp all its implications, it is necessary to remember that reason is the form, as it were the soul, of human acts; as the soul of man gives life to his body, so the reason of man gives humanity to his acts. It is because he can know the universal that man can choose between particulars; because he knows the relation of the tools to the job in hand, because he knows why he is placing this particular action, man is in control of his activity -- and only man. From the very beginning, then, reason must lead the way; until reason has placed its stamp upon the coin of human activity it is not coin of the realm.
The apparently vicious circle of the interaction of intellect and will is broken by tracing the beginnings of that inter action to nature and ultimately to the source of nature. Reason must lead the way; but the first movement of reason is inspired, not by the activity of the will, but by a push from nature.
Nor does this mean that man has been singled out from all the pupils in the school of the universe and made to stand in a corner alone and in disgrace. Rather, he is running along with "the gang," safe in the assurance that he is "one of the fellows." For no creature that has a beginning, telling later in life the story of its successful career, can make the boast proper to the so-called "self-made man." It must make the confession that it was given a start, it must trace back its earliest efforts to that solid power of natural principles. Or, going farther, everything that has a beginning, precisely because it began, must be traced to that which alone had no beginning, to the God of nature. This is true of everything -- existence, life, sensibility, knowledge, activity of any kind; and so, of course, of human activity.
Keep in mind that when we speak of the beginning of human activity, we are talking of its end or goal. For it is because of the end or goal that human activity starts at all. A man does not adjust his false teeth in the morning for no reason; but for several good reasons. In fact he has a good reason for everything he does, or he must convince himself that he has; otherwise he will be forced to doubt the humanity off his own actions. And this is a very discomforting doubt. In other words, there is human activity because of desire for an object, because there is an end in sight. And the whole of that activity is moulded in view of the object of desire, or the end.
With reference to the goal or end -- apprehension, volition, conation, enjoyment
The beginnings of human action deal with the end of human action. Looking for the roots of that controlled action which alone is human, we must fool: first at the actions of intellect and will that deal with the goal or end. And of course the first act of the intellect deals with the work of knowing. The very first step is knowledge or apprehension of the end. The will, riveting this end proposed by the intellect, pays it the flattering tribute of wishfulness (volition). Further impressed by the desirability of this end, the will does more than merely wish; it wants this end or goal, and that means it is ready to take what steps are necessary to get it. Finally, when the attainment of that desirable object is over and done with, the will sits down to enjoy the possession of its goal.
A schoolboy taken on a tour of a hospital sees the surgeons actually at work. He thinks they are splendid and wishes he could be a surgeon. If he stops there, that will be the end of it. But if he goes further and wants to be a surgeon, if he thinks that is the greatest profession in the world and one that he is going to master, then there is some chance of his one day sharing the joy of surgeons.
This undoubtedly explains why so many of our "good resolutions" disintegrate so rapidly; they are not good resolutions at all. They are merely wishes, castles in the air; and of course when they come into conflict with something we really want, they come tumbling down without any noise, dust or confusion precisely because they are so very frail. I once knew a priest some six feet three inches tall and weighing close to two hundred and fifty pounds, who had always cherished a secret desire to be a jockey. All of us have some such sneaking daire: bankers seem to favour being railroad engineers in their dreams; politicians dream of heroic days as firemen; university professors prefer great detective deeds, and so on. It is a harmless sort of game, for we appreciate the fact that it is a game of dreams, of half-wishes and not of real desires. We treat it as an absurd game and laugh at ourselves, unless we grow cowardly about life and try to exchange the world of reality for a world of dreams. Then we court disaster. But it comes as somewhat of a shock to realize that our unfulfilled resolutions belong in this same class of dreams.
No risk is taken with the beginning of all human activity. The goal that is naturally, necessarily known by the intellect is goodness; what the will necessarily wishes is the good, the desirable; moreover that is what it wants, what it will take steps to attain, and what alone will satisfy it. There is no question here of freedom, of control; but of rigorous, natural necessity. Never, at any time, under any circumstances whatever, will you find men or women willing, searching, pursuing anything but what is good, or what appears to them good. They cannot help it; they are built that way.
That solid foundation of human activity, the element of it that needs no control, does not detract from man's mastery of his life but rather makes it possible. If the front wheels of an automobile were not capable of being swung from side to side, we could not control an automobile's direction; but the same would be true if all the rest of the automobile had the same capacity for indirection. It is quite necessary that the seat remain stolidly beneath the chauffeur. A polo player can control his pony, but only because there are some very fundamental things about that pony that are beyond his control and independent of it, e.g. the dependability of the position of the horse's legs. A polo pony with legs as collapsible as those of a bridge table would not be of much help in a polo game. The variable ultimately rests on the invariable, as the dependent rests on the independent.
With reference to the means
It is only when we come down to a consideration of the steps to the goal, the means to be used for the end, that there is question of controlled action. And here too, naturally, begins the question of human responsibility, human success and human failure.
The machinery of human activity is not unlike a gasoline engine. We have an infallible automatic starter in nature; once started, the interaction of intellect and will is like the steady interaction of the different cylinders of the gas engine. The explosion in one prepares the way, gives the pressure necessary, for the succeeding explosion in the next; so each act of the intellect prepares the way for an act of the will, which in turn makes necessary an act of the intellect and this again is followed by an act of the will. When our human engine is running smoothly, it is difficult to separate the action of intellect from that of will, so quickly and intimately do they run into one another; but let one cylinder misfire, and we have a stuttering, coughing, creeping paralysis of the whole powerful engine.
- With reference to the means:
- On the part of the intellect -- counsel, judgment, command.
These acts of intellect and will go in pairs, like policemen in an unsavoury district of a large city. It is, in fact, the only safe way to travel; for if, we are to get anything done, we cannot do it blindly without disaster, nor yet can we accomplish it by mere thinking. Because human activity is controlled action, it demands both intelligence and power; for every ounce of power there must be an equal amount of direction of that power. The direction, the traffic officer of human activity, is intelligence; the source of power is the will.
On the part of the will -- consent, election, execution
If we follow the mental processes of a little girl investing the coin which has just been advanced from the family treasury, we shall have an accurate account of the process of controlled use of means to an end. This little girl knows that money exists to be spent, the end is clear, desirable and desired, indeed intended. The question is what means will best accomplish the perfection of inventing it. So she taka counsel with herself and sea that both toys ant chocolates are adequate and desirable means. She consents to the fact that both of these are good and desirable. But which one to choose? This demands a judgment between the two, which falls, let us say, on chocolates. That decided, she elects to buy the chocolate and is now ready to make her purchase. The passage from choice to actual purchase, the execution of that choice, is accomplished under the direction of the intellect's command, the end is in her possession, the chocolate' in her hands.
Two characteristic: all are uniquely human; all are controlled.
Each of these acts flows into the following act and depends on the preceding it. So the consent is reasonable because of the preceding counsel; the choice is not blind because of the preceding judgment; and the command effective because of the preceding push of the election or choice. In spite of all the intricate dodging and ducking involved in running, the football-player invariably puts one foot down after the other: left, right, lot, right, with never a break in the regularity of the succession. So in spite of the intricacy of the human activity under this or that set of conditions, invariably it will be the product of an act of the intellect, followed by one of the will, followed by one of the intellect, and so on -- with never a break in the regularity of the succession.
All of these acts are under our control. We do not have to take counsel, we can rush into things, we can do the first thing that enters our minds. We do not have to consent to the material counsel has laid before us. We do not have to select one from the many good things to which we consent; nor is it beyond our power to refuse to make a choice at all, even when there is only one worth-while thing offered to us. We can take any or all of them; or we can leave them. And that very control gives these acts the stamp of humanity. We are in the driver's seat, doing the driving; everything else in the universe is driven by an irrevocable necessity.
Each one of these acts is different, in a class by itself. Counsel offers an array of good things; judgment picks out one. Consent is but comfortable complacency in all the good things offered by counsel, without the labour of choosing any particular one. While command is like the pest at a week-end party who, full of energy, is constantly breaking into the moments of quiet loafing with the cheery exclamation: "Let's do something."
The whole purpose of human activity is, after all, to get something done, to reach up and to hold happiness. It is not at all surprising that the act of command should have very much the same part formerly had by commanding generals in the days when war was a gentleman's sport. Command dashes up and down the lines, dictating every move made. Whenever anything is done humanly, whether within a man himself or externally, it is because that act has been commanded; otherwise it escapes the mastery of the man himself and is no longer human, no longer controlled.
Command swings back and forth behind the lines of human activity, ordering every movement. Nothing that has to do with the means to an end is, outside its authority. Counsel, consent, judgment, election -- somewhere in all of them and behind them all you will find command. Not merely the movements of a man's hands and feet, but of his intellect and will are at his command, subject to the orders issued by his intellect.
Its very important position demands that we look at the act of command more closely. It is an act of the intellect, sandwiched in between the will's choice and the will's movement to execution or use, keeping intact that invariable successions acts of intellect and will. But the very efficacy of command tells us that it is not merely an act of the intellect; it smacks of power, of effective movement, and that is the work of the will. In command, then, there is an clement of intellect and an element of will; and at that, it is only right and just that such a responsible office-holder in the control-room of human activity should combine the two essential elements of all human activity, i.e. control and movement.
Perhaps the relative position of these two elements will be dear from the mere statement that command is effective orderly movement. It is not mere movement, but ordered, directed, aimed movement. The movement coma from the will; the direction and the communication of that direction to the executing potency -- eyes, hands, feet, etc. -- is the work of intellect. Before there is room for command, we must have arrived at definite choice; to step beyond this choice into the field of execution means that this movement to execution, like all movements of the will, needs direction, needs intelligent aiming. The movement which comes from the will flows along intelligent channels under the direction of the intellect. Command, then, briefly, is an act of the intellect, presupposing a movement of the will.
A tourist visiting the Cathedral at Cologne can become so enraptured of the detail work about the door that he never sees the inside and has no conception of the sweeping lines of the exterior. But if he goes back along the street which stretches straight out from the Cathedral and sees it as a whole, the very details which are so precious find their proper place in the plan of the whole and make a fitting preparation, as they were meant to, for the grandeur of the interior. The same is true of a study of human acts; we can so bury ourselves in details as to miss the beauty and significance of the whole.
Practical views: Birth and growth to maturity of human act.
With a better perspective we can see the ingenuous sweep of human activity, and it must strike us at once that the origins of burden control can be accurately described in the homely terms of the human origins of every individual. The conception and birth of human activity is taken in hand by nature and runs its course to a happy conclusion necessarily, infallibly through the acts dealing with the end -- apprehension, volition, intention or conation. The baby has arrived; the process of growth to maturity is ready to begin.
Decision and execution in every-day life
The beginnings of that growth will of course be under the protecting wings of home life -- the period included by counsel, consent, judgment and election. The first effortless days of innocent, unworried childhood correspond to ace of courted and consent. Rugged adolescence, with its mighty determinations and sweeping judgments, its trials, struggle, and high hopes, will represent the process of judgment and election. The final sortie out of the protection of home life into a cold world and to the ultimate triumph of founding a home is the phase taken in by command, execution and enjoyment.
A view of the imposing structure of human activity from yet another angle, enables us to see it as the double process of making up our minds and carrying out our intentions. As to the goal or end, there is no difficulty; our mind is made up for us by nature, leaving us no worries about apprehension of the end, its volition or intention. But making up our minds about the means to attain that end is another matter. We must shop about rounding up the means at hand by taking counsel. If there is only one way of doing the thing, of course we do not bother about counsel nor do we take counsel about unimportant trifles. There are no long mental processes involved in hitting a nail with a hammer.
Counsel is necessary and helpful. And it immediately involves our consent to the desirability of the means it has rounded up. But both counsel and consent become painful processes if they do not quickly lead further. An example of this is the mental agony of a woman with an extensive wardrobe who cannot get beyond consent to the beauty and desirability of all her gowns, even though her husband is shouting: "We will never make it."
If she is ever going to get to the party, she must make up her mind. She must judge which dress will be best for the occasion and then decide to wear it. This decision does not put the dress on for her, much less get her to the party in time. The decision must be carried through, must be commanded and executed or her intentions are never carried out. She cannot go to the party with only her mind made up.
I think it is fairly evident that all this is not mere theorizing, but a statement of homely facts with which everyone is familiar. From everyday life we have a whole host of exhibits of every one of these steps, caught as though they were suddenly frozen, or surprised and buried in just the exact posture by a flow of faithfully preserving lava. There is the eternally deliberate, over-cautious man who never has all the possible means rounded up, the budding novelist who is never quite ready to start his novel, the newly and secretly married couple who are still looking for better ways of breaking the news at home. There is the person who can never find anything good enough to win approval and consent, like the woman shopper who exhausts the clerk by "just looking." There is the child so enraptured of all the candy in the show case that it cannot make the bitter judgment which will exclude all others in favour of the one which its precious penny will buy; or the man faced by the problem of choosing between the peace and pleasure offered by an evening of poker with the boys or an evening at home. There is the procrastinator who never reaches a decision, who is always going to look into this or that, see about this or that; the man with a toothache who knows the tooth should be pulled but never quite decides to have it done; or the women who knows her in-laws should be visited, but never decides just when that visit should be made.
When we come to the point of actually getting things done, the difference between choice and command jumps out at us from every day of our own lives. Hard as decision or election is, it cannot be compared with the encountering of actual details and obstacles involved in really doing the thing. How often we have chosen to clean up our desk on a certain day and how often we have scuttled out from under that choice. There is always much more embarrassment involved in coaxing a precocious child to speak its piccolo before company than in merely electing to have the child show the company what an extraordinary child it is.
The government of the kingdom of man
The whole process is indeed nothing more or less than the process of the government of the kingdom of man and his empire of the universe. It is the question of the intelligent control and direction of his life, his activities, his contacts with the universe to the one end of attaining happiness.
The ends or purposes of this government are taken care of by nature, the foundation is solidly laid by our naturally necessary acts relative to the end -- apprehension, volition, conation. The deliberations and decisions of government, the weighing of the means and the choice of the particular one which will have governmental sanction, is the work done by counsel, consent, judgment and election. The legislative branch is entirely concentrated in the act of command; and the executive, carefully following the letter laid down by the law, extends to all that is subject to man's intellect and will.
------------------------------------------ These acts can be graphically presented in this manner: ACTS OF INTELLECT ACTS OF WILL Dealing with the end 1. Simple apprehension 2. Simple volition 3. Judgment proposing the end 4. Intention Fruition or enjoyment of end. Dealing with means. A. In Intentional Order. 5. Counsel 6. Consent 7. Judgment 8. Election B. In Order of Execution. it. 9. Command or precept 10. Active use Passive use in the executing faculties.------------------------------------------There will be the absolute subjects of intellect and will themselves, never giving an instant of worry about rebellion; the colonies, partly but not entirely subject, have some very definite powers of their own -- the sensitive nature of man; finally the autonomous members of the commonwealth who can only be called subjects by a kind of courtesy -- the vegetative side of man's nature. That is man's kingdom. His empire is the universe which he can and does use to his ends. His use of it is an expression of his power over it, of the ability he has to command.
Forging the tools of life, as well as wielding them, demands delicate balance
The scholastic used to say that the superiority of man over the rest of the universe was plainly seen in the perfect balance of all the elements of the universe in man. He was a little universe in himself; yet a universe where no one angle protruded to mar the beauty of the whole. Certainly balance between intellect and will, starting out from the firm foundations of nature to the fitting climax of the vision of God, is the secret of the distinctiveness and effectiveness of human action.
Blindness of sheer will; practical sterility of sheer intellect
Let the will play an overbearing part and the result is a ruthless, blind release of power, a reign of unseeing terror whose only effect is incalculable damage to the individual and to everyone with whom he comes into contact. This is the tragic half-truth that the world would have us bow down before today when it tells us man is merely an animal. Subordinate the will entirely and there results a futile, cold, sterile creature incapable even of dreams; another of those tragic half-truths, a caricature sponsored by Descartes and his followers in their attempt to make man angelic instead of human.
Despair of endless steps
Deny to man the solid foundation of nature, the end from which activity starts and to which it unerringly goes, and man is placed on an endless treadmill with only the escape of despair and death. This is the third tragic half-truth, widespread today in the philosophers' insistence on man as a part of society, a part of a process of social development, and nothing else, coming from nowhere, going to no place, merely keeping the wheels of society turning.
That balance makes the difference between bungling and skillful living
Tragic as these half-truth are, they cannot compare with the catastrophe involved in the complete falsehood that would deny both intellect and will to man, that would deny both end and means, making him mercy a machine. That is the uttermost depth beyond which one cannot go; its very depravity serves as a brilliant fog to bring out the sublimity, the brilliance, the vigour, and comfort of the complete truth about man and his activity -- that he is the image of God, on his way back to God. We cannot take this or that part of man and neglect the rest without doing violence not only to truth but to man himself. We must take the complex whole, keeping a delicate balance between the control-room and the subjects of that control, and between the elements involved in the control-room itself. That balance makes the difference between man as he is and man as he is grotesquely caricatured today; maintenance of it makes the difference between bungling life and living skilfully. Let man bank too sharply to one side or the other, go up too steeply or down too steeply, let the engine falter, and the soaring flight of his activity comes tumbling down to crash in failure amid the things of mere earth.
The act of command: what interferes with command interferes with our mastery of life
That skill in living is epitomized in the act of command. What interferes with that command, interfere with our mastery of our own life. It makes no difference whether that interference comes from within or without us; when our ability to command weakens, we have begun to turn over the direction of our life to someone or something else. It may be the rebellion of passion, the inertia of boredom, the attraction of another personality, or a too great delicacy for the feelings of another, that is robbing us of command; whatever it is, it is making a direct attack on our ability to live successfully. Whatever contributes to that command, whether it be discipline, self-denial, or energetic use of our power to command, builds up our power for living. It may very well be that outside the kingdom of ourselves, our comments are entirely disregarded; but that does not make a great deal of difference. The important thing for successful living is that within our own kingdom, within ourselves, that command be supreme.
By command man shares the labours of Providence
All other creatures in the universe participate passively in divine Providence by natural inclinations guiding them to their respective ends. They are mere subjects of that law. But over and above this, man takes an active hand in the affairs of Providence, he is not merely a subject but something of a legislator for himself, able not merely to be provided for but actively to provide for himself and others. And this active participation in divine Providence is immediately brought about by his act of command.
Law and the reign of law are impossible without command which is the heart of control
This is the law of his internal kingdom. By it the reign of law is set up and the anarchy, the brutality, the ruin of lawlessness stamped out. This is the deepest secret of the control which stamps an act with humanity; this is the heart of control.
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